The Samsung
ML-1210 is a home level 12ppm mono laser printer. With a resolution of
600dpi and an average toner life span of 2,500 pages (at 5%) it makes an
attractive option for the home, or for personal use. The small footprint and
fairly quick print times mean that consumers looking for a personal laser printer need not break the bank to get some thing quick, and simple. The ML-1210 connects to the computer either via a USB or parallel cable. With a true resolution of 600dpi and 8MB of fixed memory the ML-1210 uses a Juniper3 66MHz RISC processor to tackle everything from poster printing, transparencies, letters, and card
stock for ~$180 USD.

The ML-1210
is shadowed by the ML-1250 which has just about identical specs, but with
expandable memory, and 1200x600dpi resolution offers a bit more upgradeability
with PCL6 emulation and energy saving features. Both printers are nearly identical otherwise, and well suited to the home environment.

Printing Expenses: The cost of replacement toner
cartridges is about $60, thus the cost per printed page sits at 2.4 cents per
page. The actual yield will undoubtedly be under 2500 pages from the cartridge, but should keep below $0.034 per page if we assume a 70% yield - still providing relatively inexpensive printing. Naturally, your actual cost per page depends on what you tend to print. If you only ever print pages of text, the 5% coverage and $0.024 cost will stand more valid than if you tend to print pages from the web, or documents with many images.

A 150 sheet
paper tray at the top of the printer holds paper vertical like a fax machine or the older ink-jet printers. The ML-1210 printer comes with neither a parallel or a USB cable.

Printer Controls

The printer controls are dead simple and hint towards the market this printer is intended to satisfy. Aside from the power button mounted on the rear of the printer, the main bezel has three indicating LED's and three buttons.

Cancel/Reprint deal with existing print jobs
and allows the user to cancel a current print job or reprint the last page that was sent to the printer.

Toner Save makes images and such things a bit lighter, and really works best with just text documents, helping to extend the useful life of those expensive toner cartridges. There is a sight decrease in print quality when this feature is on, and some light gray scales may not be printed at all so this feature is best left for draft copies as image quality will be lessened.

When the Demo button is held for a short
duration it will cause the printer to print out a test page with its
current configuration: amount of memory, total number of pages printed, and several other points. If the Demo button is held for longer than 10 seconds it will prompt the printer to go through a self-cleaning operation - for example if there is excess toner on the internal roller drum.